 So welcome, everybody, to the Martinis Segal Theatre Center here at the Graduate Center. My name is Frank Henschger. I'm the director of the Segal Center. Next to me is Deep Shikha, who is one of our PhD students, but also professor of theater at Hunter College. And was the one who connected us with this. What I think is a very unique, rare, and significant evening we have with us a representative of India, Indian Theater College of Katakali Dancing, and everybody who knows theater. Great, yeah, you're right. And loves theater, knows what an outstanding, significant global theater tradition that is. It goes back to the 1200s. And as far as I know, maybe the form that has been performed unchanged for almost 1,000 years. And there's nothing we really can compare at many other forms. We do know no theater others do come later. There's the Shinto Dancing in Japanese theater, but still, perhaps this goes up even earlier. So what we see is the earliest representation of creating meaning through dance and performance of mankind. It's extraordinary. And Manoj will be performing for us. His makeup was four hours today. I would like you to recognize that. And it's a big thing also to present it not in a normal setting, but at a university. So there really, we're asking a lot from the performers. And Kaladharan will then later on also speak with us and give a little explanation. So the program will be 57, 58 minutes. And then we will have a short panel, and then we will open questions. And maybe you want to say a few words, very short. Kaladharan has been coming to Hunter College for several years now. And when I saw one of their performances a couple of years back, and my parents were also in the house, I was so moved. And I thought that since Kaladharan was coming to the US, and Kaladharan is a retired professor of Kathakali from Kalamandalam, which is the National Center for Performing Arts. So when I found out that he was coming, I wanted to share it with our Graduate Center audience. So thank you. I'm not in a position to give you a detailed account of what Kathakali is all about, because we are running out of time. The performance itself is for one hour and seven minutes. And Kathakali is a South Indian classical dance theater, is an amazing amalgam of dance, theater, music, both vocal and instrumental. And the makeup and questioning takes about four to five hours for an actor to transform himself into a Kathakali character. So Manoj has come here. Unfortunately, we are not able to bring live music here. It's accompanied by CD music. And Kathakali actors, Kathakali characters seldom speak on stage. The verbal acting is separated from the actors and is given over to two vocalists who sing the text of the play. And this is translated into hand gestures, stylized and realistic and body movements and facial expressions. It involves so much of dancing. And the hand gestures are symbolic. And it's difficult for a person who is not initiated to appreciate, to understand the meaning of each and every hand gesture, but still, the dancing, the movements, the expressions, how he presents himself on stage would be very interesting for you. And today, Manoj is presenting a very unusual character in Kathakali, an aboriginal hunter, a woodsman, a hunter, who actually sleeps in his house at the dead of night in the forest. And then he hears a sound coming from somewhere and he wakes up. So as the curtain goes, you will see him lying asleep in his hut and snoring. And then he wakes up listening to this sound and he goes in search of the sound. Where does this sound come from? And he walks into the forest, deep into the forest, all alone, afraid sometimes. And he shows all these expressions and he comes across a beautiful lady whose leg is being swallowed by a python. And that's where she wails, she cries. And he kills the python and the lady is very much relieved and she tells the hunter that God will bless you. God will give you the gift for what you've done for you. But the hunter is not pleased. His visibility is appointed. He says, I'm in love with you. I cannot let you go. I don't have a wife. I'm all alone, but I have a beautiful house where you can come and stay. You can get married. We can have children. We can swim in the river. We can enjoy the spring. Why don't you come with me? But this lady who is actually a queen, a princess, who got married to King Nala, she had received a boon from the Lord of Heaven that if anybody tries to outrage their modesty, he will turn into ashes. So the hunter makes advances repeatedly and tells her to come with him. But then, finally, she prays, Lord of the Heaven. And the hunter turns into ashes. Unfortunately, we don't have also the domain, the princess who should have been here. And Manoj as the hunter will show the reflections of the lady who is present. And it's a solo recital. He impersonates the role of the maithi two at times. Thank you. Hope you'll be able to enjoy it. Thank you very much. Now it's time to turn off your cell phones. And if you have them, just take a moment. I do the same. There will also be a small reception afterwards, a glass of wine if you have additional questions. And yes, he's Hunter College, and we have a hunter from Katakali Theater. So thank you. So we'll start the conversation. Why is he leaving? He's taking off the makeup and the costume. He's coming back? Yes. Just for you. So tell us a bit. What did we see? Call other one if you want to? Sorry? What did we see? What did we see? You mean this particular except? The character and the actor. The character is, as I told you before, it's an unusual character in Kathakali. It doesn't come into the mainstream of Kathakali. Performance with its very special makeup and costumes and the headgear, everything is different from what you usually see as part of the Kathakali repertoire. And this particular character has a kind of freestyle acting. He is not very much within the discipline of the Kathakali's organic framework. He can go outside the territory. That means he can improvise. He can also enact things which usually do not come at the purvy of the Kathakali hysterics. If we would be in India, where would we see this performance? What would be the occasion and the location? Kathakali has been associated with the Hindu temples of Kerala. So wherever festivals are there, Kathakali performances are there. The south of India. In South Kerala, in Kerala, in the southwest tip of the Indian subcontinent. So throughout the temple's performances are there. But formerly there were overnight performances, beginning by 8.30 in the late evening and going on till next dawn. So they would be in a temple and it would be people who come into the temple and sit down. The devotees come spectators. And the audience stays for the entire night? Yeah, usually, yeah. But now the situation has changed. Now the performances have been cut short to three hours. It begins by 6.00 or 6.30. Goes on till 9.30. So we didn't do too bad for one hour at this time. Yeah, not too bad. So tell us, who wrote the story? How is it given to the next generation? And how is the training? This particular excerpt is taken from a great Kathakali play called Nalajaritham, written by a great poet. It's supreme poetic utterance, in fact. And each word, supreme poetic utterance. This text, poetic utterance. Atturance. In which the implications cannot be completely communicated by the actors. The subtext is there, which is very difficult to be communicated through the hand gesture and language and also expressions, movements and expressions. Could you maybe, just for the audience, give us an explanation of some of the hand gestures, as translations, what they mean, if you could show us? Yeah, for instance, I can just tell you. Repeat the mic because it's my, yeah. It is repeatedly shown by the actor, tree and the forest. And in the wee hours of the morning, the sun is about to rise, low sun. So that simple was, that gesture was shown by him. Yeah, he was compiling, the hunter was comparing the eyes of this beautiful lady with that of the fish and lotus flower. The face looks like the lotus flower. This is a very neoclassical image used, very much in Kathakali. Deep Shikha, since you are a teacher at Hunter College. And so you must know about the hunters, but also here, a student here. So when was the first time you saw such a performance? What did it mean for you? You know, when we were growing up in the 80s, I saw some excerpts on TV, because that was the national television. We saw a lot of that. So you saw it first on television? Yeah, yeah. How old were you? Like six, seven, eight. And then my first live performance was actually the Putana at Hunter. Yeah. The Putana demon. In America, yeah. In America, yeah. And the Putana demon is the demon that comes to feed Krishna from her breast. And then she actually offers poisoned milk, but Putana is a demon. So Krishna is able to vanquish her. And yeah. Krishna sucks her life out. Out of the breasts, yeah. And that's a very climatic, very much like this, very climactic piece, yeah. So tell us a bit, where does this form of theater fit in in contemporary India? Who goes? Who sees it? What does it mean? So one space is the temple space that is still there. And the other space is the contemporary theater space, where dance performances, dance groups are inviting performers to come and perform. And then, of course, SNA. And we actually have Uttarakulawala. She's a dance professor at Barnard. So she might be able to fill in a little bit on that too. She's a Sangeet Narak Academy Award winner also. So the SNA provides a lot of support, right? Some support. And Kerala Kalamandalam, the institution. Right. For imparting training and conducting performance of Kathakali, it undertakes performances. It's Kathakali troops travel everywhere and conduct performances. So this become very much secular in the sense that the space where this is performed doesn't have any religious connotations. Yeah, so that's outside the temple. Outside the temple. Yeah. And the Indian government does the, through ICCR, they promote these performances outside of India on national stages and international stages also. Yeah, it is incredible. We do not really know how the Greek temple dances looked like. We don't know how Shakespeare really was played. But this is something we can see almost 1,000 years ago with perhaps small variations. But it's really one of the original forms of mankind and to tell a story about men and the woman, about hunting, about the gods, the forests. Interesting, very modern in a way that the narrator, you know, has separated the voice from the performer. He's uttering and speaking and dancing movements. The music also is on stage, I think, on the performances. So quite such an ancient concept, so beautifully contemporary in a dance dramaturgy. The training for Katakali is legendary. Kortalski, Shackner, and so many others. I think, Peter, if I'm right, you trained in Katakali once. Yeah, did you? Oh, you talked about it, yes. But in workshops inspired by that, tell us a little bit about the Katakali training. What time does it start? How do you become a Katakali dancer? Ever since Kerala Kalamadalam was established, the ancient system of Gurugula disappeared. Say again? The ancient system of Gurugula, Guru's teacher and student. Students stayed with the teacher and learned the art form for years and years. Apprentice, master apprentice system. Is no longer. When did it end? Formerly in 1930. By 1930, Katakali was heading to extinction and the founder of Kerala Kalamadalam, he thought that this ancient system of training would not survive. After a thousand years almost, it changed. Actually, Katakali is only, it was originated in 17th century. But there were other forms also, like Kudiatham, the traditional science theater, which was evolved in the 10th century. But then, Vallathol, a great poet, a visionary, he just came to the conclusion that this art form cannot survive without institutionalization. That's how Kerala Kalamadalam was founded. Since then, those who attained the age of 12 could learn at Kalamadalam and continue his training for eight to 10 years. You started at 10 years old? 12, I think. And you go like a special school, you stay overnight, it's like a soccer school. Yeah, it's a strictly residential school and each part of the body is trained separately. It's fine-tuning of the body. So that you cannot do anything else. A Katakali actor, when he completes his course, he cannot go for any other work. This is the only thing he can do because so much of stylization has gone into his movements, his facial expressions, his hand gestures, torso movements. So he is fit only for this. As Shakhner says, this is his second nature. So he has to go with it, there is no other go. And so all the gestures and each part of the body is written down in books and... Each part of the body is trained separately and the student would not know what it is all about. It's all technique, pure techniques. And finally, in a full-fledged classroom, everything is brought together. The text, the context, the emotions, the vocal music, the instrumental music, then it becomes a full-fledged performance without makeup and costumes. And then as years pass by, then the spectators would realize this person would be good for female character, this actor would be good for male character, and the teachers would also identify that depending upon the body language of each actor, he is given such kind of rules. That's how Katakali actors come alive. And they will carry on their roles for their lifetime. Yeah, they have to. There is inevitably no choice. Because it's not really possible to be playing Rama and then all of a sudden transitioning into a Minuku character or something. Actually, that's possible depending upon the versatility of the actor. Like great actors like Kalamandran Kishanar and Gopi, they could take any roles. The male roles and the female roles and the noble, the wicked, the grotesque. But most of these actors, they specialize in certain roles. But like the original Shakespeare comics were men only, this is no female... Traditionally, it has been a male bastion. But from 1917 onwards, a female troupe, a women's troupe emerged in Kerala. And incidentally, Merlin Fidco did a research on the female characterization by female actors in Katakali. And how knowledgeable is the audience? Do they like in baseball here, which I don't really understand, this is a spider, a curveball or something, and people see it supposedly from a stadium far away and there's a tiny place. But does the audience know all the gestures and the movements, and how do they know? It's a very tough, complex question. Because some among the spectators, they know all the subtleties of acting. The verbal acting, the movements, the expressions, the meaning of the hand gestures, the literature, the rhythm, the music. You should be master of all these, in fact, as spectators to appreciate the art form in its entirety. But others can have a certain kind of enjoyment, like enjoying the music a little bit, seeing the grotesque characters and the wicked characters when they yell and roar like the aboriginal hunter. That can be appreciated even by a person who is not very initiated. Like me, yes. Yeah, I was gonna ask. So, yeah, so, but how does the audience learn about it? They just, their parents tell them? The grandparents, or how does they know? How do they know? For centuries, they actually sat with their grandfathers and grandmothers who explained to them the stories, a little bit of the hand gestures, the expressions, and in families, they would reenact the story and then you would go to see the professional. Almost like house music and then you go to see the professional chamber music or history, yeah. But now, there are various ways in which people can go and appreciate this because elected demonstrations are held. Demonstrations help a lot for people to understand and appreciate these art forms. Such classes are held everywhere, far and wide, in Kerala and outside. Very often, television has been the death of local theater traditions. You could see it fast all the time and people don't want to see it anymore. How is it in India, is it shown on national television still and people still go to see the performance or has it been almost the end of an art form that is supposed, normally, I guess, supposed to be life in person, in a temple perhaps even. So how is the relation between the contemporary audience, you mean? The contemporary audience is a mix, yeah. I'm not in a position, I'm not competing to comment on the sensitivity of the contemporary audience. Of course, there are some who are very initiated and who understand the nuances of acting and dancing in Kathakali. But for most of the audience, it's a kind of general appreciation. So is it every day on television or just on the high holidays or hot? Televisions do not present these programs more often. Yeah, not as much as they used to. They just give once in a while because when there is some news value, then they would give it, otherwise they're just taking over. But Kathakali has survived always. It's a dynamic art form. It has visited the test of time because it can change itself. It's not a conservative form in the first place. According to the changes that take place in the society, Kathakali also evolves. So that's why of all the classical art forms in Kerala, Kathakali is the most popular, like Vardhanathya mentioned. But in essence, it's also a way to explain the divine texts to tell the stories of the gods. So Diva, the Shiva who is a dancer, a divine dancer in a way by himself. So it's used to explain as the medieval Christian mystery plays where very often the Catholic church said, if you cannot understand the Bible, then you should not have, you wouldn't need a dancer to show you what it's all about. But I think in Indian culture or in Indian religion, it's a fantastic symbiosis, I think, of movement dance and the unexplicable, in the Jungian sense, as you said this stuff, you cannot even explain, but the audience receives something of that shining divine presence. How when did you see your very first Kathakali performance? My father was associated with the temples, he was an administrator of the temple, so I grew up in an atmosphere in which Kathakali was very popular. So I moved with the actors and the musicians and I have an inherent taste for music. So if you have a taste for music, then of course you can go into all this in all the Indian dances and theater forms. So that, and later on, then you cultivate that because you are constantly moving with such kind of an actors and such kind of an atmosphere and culture, then you can usually get into it. And before we go to audience questions, so how many plots, how many stories, how many variations, of course the variation was in the variation, but how many are there? Like Shakespeare plays or Goethe plays or how many are there that people go and see? Yeah, Kathakali plays have traditionally been composed from the great Indian epics, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata. Which tells a life story of Lord Krishna, Ramayana, tells a story of Lord Srirama and Mahabharata, tells about the eternal rivalry between the two branches of the family, the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Apart from this, Kathakali has also adapted from other epics, yeah. Like King Lear has been made into a Kathakali performance he has made into a Kathakali performance in late 1980s or so. And then Homer's Iliad and Odyssees were made into Kathakali. Rustam and Surab was made into Kathakali play. And like this, so many, but the problem is that this particular, any classical dance form or theater form has a format, has a form. And this form is the most dominant. And whatever is the theme, the form reminds. And because of that, whether you perform a play from Mahabharata, a story from Mahabharata or Ramayana or from Greek epics, it doesn't matter. The form determines it. And if you change the form, then the art loses its identity. So that is one of the biggest constraints of this art form and also its strength, I would say. So it's like a language, like a piano, where you have the certain notes are clear and you combine them. We still wait for the dancer or Paloma to come but maybe we go out right away, Michael, if you could put up a little bit of light to the audience and we take some questions, maybe say briefly who you are and a question or comment. Phil Baichman, a very revelatory and exciting event for me and I'm sure for everyone here. I was curious about our theater in the West, America, other places, very lately seems to be more and more concerned with social, political issues like gender, immigration, race, and so forth. Now, India is not lacking in those issues. So I was wondering if there's, shall I continue? I was wondering if there is a, if this form of theater touches on issues like caste, untouchables, the forest, the sort of quasi-civil war in the forests or the Naxalek rebellion or what seems to be a reactionary Hindu government or the oppression of Muslims or the annihilation of Kashmir, that's a mouthful. But at any rate, I was curious about that. I think when it comes to the traditional performing arts and its dominant form and its disciplined movements and expressions, these socialist issues cannot come into it in fact. If you're taking it as a discourse in this form, it will not have the desired effect because these are social issues which are to be addressed to a larger audience and Kathakali and other classical forms address only miniscule audience so a small part of the population is interested in it. So if you have social larger issues, why should you choose this form? Why don't you go for other media? There are so many other media that can express these issues more powerfully, much more emphatically than classical dance and theater. This is my personal view as a critic, as a person who has been associated with this for long. Everywhere I went, I had to face these questions. Thank you for raising the question, but these social issues, political issues, all these issues that are very sensitive, these can be raised in other platforms, but not. As classical ballet most probably would not comment on climate change or on things like this, but it's a good question. Since we have a performer here, so first of all, congratulations, this is one of the most beautiful things we have shown and over in all these years here. You understand it, yeah? So again, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. How did it feel for you to present your work in this space? You know, I remember that. I'll tell you later. I'll tell you later. Yes, good feeling, because good response. Can you speak in the mic? Because, yeah. I am good feeling because good response from you, everybody, all of you. It's a good, good feel me. It's a very good feeling about presenting the performance here, yeah, these ambience. And so how many of the roles of Kali does he perform? How many of the characters does he have in his repertoire? He performs a wide range of characters, in fact. He gives us the heroes, the anti-heroes, Ravana, Duryodhana, then Srirama, King Nala, Bhima, Arjuna, Yudhishthira, all these roles. And of course, all these unusual characters like the Aboriginal Hunter, the monkey god Hanuman. Yeah, Hanuman is also one of his specializations. So like in Comedian, he has a repertoire of characters, 10, 20. He can play at any moment, any time, and get into costume work. It's all rehearsed 100 times, 1,000 times, and it's all there in his mind. The moment he comes on stage and the music comes, everything, all the techniques come to him. There was a big improvisational element today, right? You were improvising a lot, right? Yeah, so many things. Improvised, yeah. Especially the last one. Take the microphone, yeah. Sorry. Especially the last one, three babies. Yes, yes, yes. The honest part. Yeah, and the Vatsala, one of the Rassas. Yes, yes, yes. So we have one audience member who, since a long time, wanted to express her feelings for the performer. Yes, now we are recording it. I was very moved by the performance. I was aware as I listened to the music and watched the movement that it was very, very tightly related, the specificity of the steps with the music so that there was a specific thing done to the ta-ta-ta or this or whatever it was. So was that so tightly choreographed that it is constantly repeated with that dance? That's that dance. Oh. Yeah, you're the same person. Correct. If we have live musicians, there is a call and response aspect to this performance, which we don't get to see with recorded music. So they might play that sound, that musical arrangement a couple of times. And he might keep doing it a few times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The dance would respond to the da-da-da-da-da-da. Yeah. Yeah, so the call and response, yeah. The details can change, of course. But basically, it would remind the same. If we have two questions, one and then two. Thank you so much for your performance. Very delightful. You said that Kathakali, we do a lot of perform scenes from Mahabharata and Ramayana. They are very, very long. So do you perform all the stories, the sub-stories, and all that, or do you pick? And if so, how do you pick which ones? Actually, there have been plays composed from Ramayana. Eight plays have been composed from Ramayana. And that gave birth to Ram and Atam, the Dancing the Life story of Rama, from which Kathakali was evolved later, when stories from Mahabharata came into being. So it's a long history. And only select plays are performed, and certain characters Kathakali gives importance to. Like for instance, the actors who come as gods, or goddesses in Kathakali do not have much to do. Whereas anti-heroes, they dominate the Kathakali stage. When Dravana comes on stage, the top-ranking artist plays this particular character. Whereas the children come as gods and kill this demon. Rama is played by a junior artist. Maybe the fourth-year student learning at Kalamantlam. He would be taking the role of Rama, and finally kills Dravana. That's a very unimportant scene in Kathakali. Kathakali always stresses, it's a very special characteristic of Kerala's aesthetic culture. All the anti-heroes are given all powers to dominate on stage. So all the subtleties of acting and dancing, the vigorous dancing of the character Tandava, as we call, that comes very much alive when a character like Dravana comes on stage, when he explains his own stories as a solo recital. And I guess like in biblical stories, they are excerpts of a form like the birth of Christ, which is a fiction, but it's been played out. So it's not always the entire Bible. You would also perform it in any... Moments with drama, humanity. So one more here, and then we'll slowly have to wrap up. Thank you for the bottom of my heart. I'm intimately familiar with the bo bo bo sound because I heard it throughout my, this vocalization throughout my childhood. My maternal grandmother was born in 1900 on a Greek island, and I heard this frequently during the course of a day. And it was a sound of mild to severe disapprobation, depending on how it was said. There was no shrill version, however. You mean the sound he mailed? Yeah, the bo bo bo. The bo bo bo, boy. Actually, Kathakali characters are not allowed to speak or utter anything on stage. Even making sounds a Ling or so. But there are exceptions. A few characters like the Aboriginal hunter, they have been given the freedom to yell, groan, then make noises. So he, this is also a little bit stylized. This manhood resembles the actual speaking or the sound of the voice of the hunter, but it's slightly stylized. Imitating the calls of the hunters for the birds Right, yeah, right. Maybe as a closing statement, if you, something you would like us to know about the work of Kathakali or the performance, what it means to you personally? What he feels is that back in India, people understand the story, they are familiar with the text, the context, and they can appreciate the art form much more. But even without knowing all this, the audience he had today, they were able to appreciate the subtleties of the movements and the acting and the dancing. And if they know a little more about the theme, the text and the context, he says there will certainly be, it will be an engrossing experience for them. So they will all come to Kathakali to a greater extent. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. So we all now do know a little bit more about Kathakali and about that great tradition of mankind, theater and performance. And really thank you for taking your time and please, yeah, go and see performances, wherever they might be in the city. It's stunning. Is he performing again somewhere soon? No, actually tomorrow we have a workshop at Bernal. So maybe you see if you can get your way to the workshop. But if you can do it. But again, thank you so much. And again, this was a spectacular performance. Thank you so much. So we're going to have a little reception here. We have a glass of wine and a little thing. So stay here with us again. Thank you all for coming. And in two weeks, we have a great program on circus, most probably the most significant program on contemporary circus in the Americas the entire time. Thank you.